RFID devices are these days widely used for identification purposes. The principle of operation of an RFID system is generally that a label coupled and matched to an antenna is affixed to an object, or an animal or a human being to assign a unique identifier thereto. In addition to the identification of electrical appliances, the need has emerged to track the operation of such appliances, whether it be to extract electrical consumption information or maintenance information for example. There are solutions to this need, but they are generally disassociated from the identification systems.
The patent application EP2796834A1 from Thomson Licensing presents an RFID identification system for detecting the activity of domestic electrical appliances. The system consists of passive RFID tags attached to each electrical power supply cord of each appliance, and of means for detecting a change in the electrical consumption of the appliances. When a change is detected, an RFID reader can then read the data from the RFID tags. This solution is based on the detection of current peaks on the power supply cord of an electrical appliance provoked by a change of state of the appliance, when it is switched on and switched off. The current pulse detected activates the RFID tag placed on the electrical cord to write a 0 or 1 bit in a memory of the integrated circuit depending on the status of the appliance. By correlation with a total consumption difference measured on the electrical meter of the home, and by interrogating all of the RFID tags, it is possible to determine which appliance has just been switched on or switched off. Thus, this type of approach requires the use of the RFID tags of read/write type, and requires the retrieval of the data on a meter of a general meter.
There is a need for a solution which mitigates the drawbacks of the known approaches. The present invention meets this need.